Pokémon Go Spawn Location Analysis

Tom Mathews | Darkphibre

July 25, 2016

A dataset spanning 110 hours, generated from a variety of Pokémon monitoring stations, was provided for analysis. Pokémon appear to spawn at fixed locations in the world, once an hour, and run away after 15 minutes. Pokémon ‘density’ is directly correlated to the number of spawn locations within view: In locations with spawning Pokémon, 40% will have on average one Pokémon visible at a time. Human population is strongly correlated with Pokémon spawn rates, culminating in regions with the lowest human population having Pokémon spawn rates of 0%.

⊕Note: This research is meant to provide insights into the lives and habitats of Pokémon, and is not intended to convey inappropriate advantages to Pokémon poachers. As such, specific details of the location of the monitoring stations will be kept private, and the researchers involved in this project are refraining from jumping in the car and heading to the nearest nest [if one were to exist]. A total of 160 stations were placed within the world, each separated by .002 latitude / longitude. We were assured that the sampling was done in an intermittent fashion to avoid disturbing the population. The coverage was selected to identify metropolitan, urban, rural, and lake habitats. Of those 160 stations, only 96 stations actually observed one or more Pokémon. Intermittent sampling provided observations on 41,657 distinct Pokémon over the course of 110 hours.

Below is a distribution plot of the Pokémon observed, combining all observation stations. As you can see, wild Pokémon are not observable outside a distance of 100m from the observation point (denoted by the red circle). ⊕Instead of Observation Posts, you can think of yourself standing in a field. How far can you see pokemon? How many will spawn around you during the course of an hour? That is what we’re talking about.

Of particular note is the sparsity of locations, the small number of black dots. Each of the 422 points represents 99 individual Pokémon spawns occurring in exactly the same location. If Pokémon spawning was random, this should be an evenly-distributed cloud of points. As this is not the case, it’s clear that Pokémon spawn in fixed locations.

Finally, the individual spawn locations themselves are relatively evenly distributed, with a slight increase in density at the diagonal directions. This merits further investigation with additional observation locations.

Given that Pokémon spawn in a fixed location, the next question becomes: How many spawn locations are observed by a typical monitoring station? Grouping each monitoring station based on the number of spawn locations contained within the monitoring station reveals that most stations have access to five or fewer Pokémon spawn locations, with very few having access to more than 10:

It’s become common knowledge that the act of a Pokémon spawning at a specific spawn location occurs on an hourly basis, and this dataset seems to confirm this observation11 This is not charted, as it’s a rather boring chart. Every single one of the 41,657 Pokémon was observed for no more than 15 minutes. The ones that were observed less than 15 minutes were during the start or end of the observation period.,22 Interesting! I’ve been shared data that seems to indicate there are 30-minute spawns. I’ve double-checked my data, and the only time this happens is when the servers seem to have a hiccup. That said, I may have more information in the next week, so stay tuned!. Hourly spawning of Pokémon is only part of the story, as an observer in any given location may have access to additional spawn locations.

Turning our gaze to these observation stations, one could think of it as standing in a singular place: What is the average time you would have to wait until another Pokémon arrived (of any type), given the time of the last Pokémon spawn? This is strongly correlated to the number of spawn locations an observation station has access to.

In referring to the cumulative frequency chart below, you can determine that in this dataset it would be 50% probable to see a new Pokémon within 18 minutes while standing stationary.

Observation Stations: Mean Minutes Until Spawn Each bar in this chart represents the number of stations that have an average time-until-next-spawn of N minutes.

Given that Pokémon spawn every 60 minutes and persist for 15 minutes, observation stations with 4 or more spawn points become increasingly likely to have concurrent Pokémon. The sampled probability of coming across multiple Pokémon was found to be:

Pokemon Seen Concurrently

Probability

1

74.659%

2

18.743%

3

04.354%

4

01.371%

5

00.541%

6

00.182%

7

00.065%

8

00.055%

9

00.020%

10

00.003%

11

00.007%

If one were waiting for a specific Pokémon to respawn, that is another story. Each spawn location may spawn a variety of Pokémon, and so anything but the most common Pokémon will take several hours to spawn at the same location. Please refer to Pokémon Spawn Frequencies per Station for a list of Pokémon type / Pokémon respawn probabilities.

It is interesting to note that the sparsity of spawning as a station becomes more rural is extremely significant. In the diagram below, the gaps in Pokémon spawning correlates to:

A freeway cutting through left-to-right at approximately 2000 latitude,

Large fields in the square mid-east, centered at 1200,1250.

A river moving South East and emptying into a lake from 1000,500 to 500,750,

The lake in the South East centered at 1250,500

The northern portion of the map contains a bustling city, and the triangular quadrant mid- to mid-west are trails cutting through the large park system (leading to the lake). You can see that low-population areas have had no Pokémon spawning during the observation period of 110 hours:

Future research includes plotting the distribution of more rare Pokémon over time, identify what else is spawning when rare Pokémon are not spawning, and the probabilities of various effects and how they pertain to spawn probabilities.

The effect of Lures on Pokémon spawn rates, both for those lured and wild Pokémon spawning nearby, was explicitly removed from this analysis, and merits additional research.

Finally, the concept of ‘nests’ is an area that merits research. While not explicitly searched for, there certainly seems to be several monitoring stations with a propensity for multiple concurrent spawns of various creatures. Refer to bars with more than 10 spawns in the Time To Spawn chart.

Tom Mathews has been an avid videogame player since the Atari 2600. He’s spent the last 20+ years developing data-driven systems, including 5 years at the Advanced Technology Group in Xbox and the last 5 years at 343 Industries helping to architect cutting-edge big data acquisition systems [see his GDC 2016 talk for details]. Over the last year, he’s been focusing more on the ‘big data’ analytical side of equation, helping to identify interesting patterns in large datasets to improve gameplay and component interactions. He’s been fascinated by the Pokémon Go cultural phenomenon, having hiked over 60KM the first week hatching eggs and hunting Pokémon. He rarely speaks of himself in the third person, and is wondering if this is overding things.33 Nah.

This paper reflects his own opinions, and do not reflect those of his employer.